Note 967 — Chapter XXX · (continued 2)

I use the epithet ostentatious, because some of his original theories are a little paradoxical; thus, he has a singular notion that the right of bequeathing property by testament is derived from the immortality of the soul; the living heirs being as it were the attorneys of those we suppose to be dead. Quia mortui revera adhuc vivunt, ideo manent domini rerum, quos vero hæredes reliquerunt, concipiendi sunt ut procuratores in rem suam. In our own discussions on the law of entail, I am not aware that this argument has ever been explicitly urged, though the advocates of perpetual control seem to have none better.